Gaston eyes Caribbean

Tropical Storm Gaston weakened to a tropical depression on Thursday morning, but it was still expected to re-strengthen and become a hurricane early next week as it approaches the Caribbean Sea.

Although the three Cape Verde storms that formed in August – Colin, Danielle and Earl – all curved to the north before entering the Caribbean, the steering patterns are now pushing these storms farther west, which could potentially impact the Cayman Islands. Cape Verde storms are the types that form after emerging from the west coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands and then travel across the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

Accuweather meteorologist Mike Pigott said Gaston was moving very slowly Thursday because the Bermuda-Azores High was weak. However, Pigott said the high was expected to strengthen over the weekend, speeding Gaston up and pushing it westward toward the Caribbean Sea.

“At this point, Gaston is expected to enter the Eastern Caribbean next week,” he said.

At that point, a trough of low pressure is forecast to form over the eastern United States, creating a weakness in the high and pulling Gaston northward, similar to the way Hurricanes Danielle and Earl were pulled to the north, Pigott said. However, he warned that the forecast was looking more than a week ahead, so it was difficult to say with certainty if and when Gaston would move north.

“As of right now, there’s no reason to believe it won’t,” Pigott said, noting the warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic. “The water temperatures are extremely favourable for development. I would expect to see low and steady development of the storm.”

Pigott noted that the peak of the hurricane season occurs next week and that the weather pattern seemed to be setting up in a way that would steer Cape Verde storms westward, putting the Cayman Islands “slightly more at risk from mid-September to late September”.

After only three named storms formed in the first 82 days of the 2010 Atlantic Basin hurricane season, four named storms formed in the subsequent 11 days, with Danielle and Earl both becoming major hurricanes of Category 3 or above. Although Danielle ultimately curved into the open Atlantic and became a ‘fish storm’, Earl was bearing down on the US East Coast Thursday, with potential landfalls in North Carolina, Massachusetts and Maine.

Despite the relatively slow start of the hurricane season, forecasters stuck to their predictions of a very active hurricane season when they updated their predictions in early August. According to the forecast of Colorado State University scientists Phil Klotzbach and William Gray, there are still 11 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes left to come this year. What’s more, Klotzbach and Gray predicted higher than average hurricane activity in the Caribbean this year, something that really hasn’t happened yet. Historically, some of the worst hurricanes to affect the Cayman Islands occurred in October and early November, after the Cape Verde season was generally over and storms tend to form in the Western Caribbean.